11. How Is Peace Possible in this World?

1 This is a question everyone
must ask. Certainly peace seems to be impossible. Yet the Word of God
promises other things that seem impossible, as well as this. His Word
has promised peace. It has also promised that there is no death, that
resurrection must occur, and that rebirth is man's inheritance.
The world you see cannot be the world God loves, and yet His Word
assures us that He loves the world. God's Word has promised us
that peace is possible here, and what He promises can hardly be
impossible. But it is true that the world must be looked at
differently if His promises are to be accepted. What the world is, is
but a fact. You cannot choose what this should be. But you can choose
how you would see it. Indeed, you must choose this.

2 Again we come to the
question of judgment. This time, ask yourself whether your judgment
or the Word of God is more likely to be true. For they say different
things about the world, and things so opposite that it is pointless
to try to reconcile them. God offers the world salvation; your
judgment would condemn it. God says there is no death; your judgment
sees but death as the inevitable end of life. God's Word assures
you that He loves the world; your judgment says it is unlovable. Who
is right? For one of you is wrong. It must be so.

3 The text explains that the
Holy Spirit is the Answer to all problems you have made. These
problems are not real, but that is meaningless to those who believe
in them. And everyone believes in what he made, for it was made by
his believing it. Into this strange and paradoxical
situationone without meaning and devoid of sense, yet out of
which no way seems possibleGod has sent His Judgment to answer
yours. Gently His Judgment substitutes for yours. And through this
substitution is the ununderstandable made understandable. How is
peace possible in this world? In your judgment it is not possible and
can never be possible. But in the Judgment of God, what is reflected
here is only peace.

4 Peace is impossible to
those who look on war. Peace is inevitable to those who offer peace.
How easily, then, is your judgment of the world escaped! It is not
the world that makes peace seem impossible. It is the world you see
that is impossible. Yet has God's Judgment on this distorted
world redeemed it and made it fit to welcome peace. And peace
descends on it in joyous answer. Peace now belongs here because a
Thought of God has entered. What else but a Thought of God turns hell
to Heaven merely by being what it is? The earth bows down before its
gracious Presence, and it leans down in answer to raise it up again.
Now is the question different. It is no longer, "Can peace be
possible in this world?" but instead, "Is it not impossible
that peace be absent here?"

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